The Purpose of the Economy

If you don’t listen to the Tom Woods Show, you’re really missing out. He always has fantastic guests, like Bob Murphy, Scott Horton, and Will Grigg. In a recent Q&A episode, he had this to say about the purpose of the economy, contra government propaganda:

“The purpose of the economy is not just to shuffle money around from one person to another. Government can shuffle money around, as indeed they’re doing… …The point of the economy is to take the array of consumer preferences, figure out the relative intensity of those preferences, and then arrange the productive resources of society (including labor services) in such a way as to conform, as best as humanly possible, to those preferences.